Alan O. Ebenstein

"Hayek did not believe that the same sort of prediction—and therefore control—that is possible in the natural sciences is attainable in the realm of society. At best, he thought, only a “pattern” of the future can be predicted in social life. He thought that to attempt to formulate laws of societal development akin to the laws of the physical sciences, as Marx attempted, is doomed to failure."

"Hayek’s approach was largely Burkean. He saw much good in inherited institutions, and yet, at the same time, he also saw the desirability and necessity of change."

"The history of the Austrian school remains unfinished, and what happens in the future may influence interpretations of the past as much as what has already occurred. An increasing number of economists, however, believe that a reconceptualization of the role the Austrian school has played in academic economics from the 1870s to the present would be more accurate than the prevailing view."

"Hayek, highly influenced by Mach as a young man, began reading him immediately following his return from service in World War I. He remarked about four decades later that he was “stimulated by Mach’s work to study psychology and the physiology of the senses,” though his interest in these areas derived as much from disagreement as agreement with Mach’s work."

"Hayek’s essential gist in capital theory was that capital is heterogeneous, that it cannot be put to many uses simultaneously or at different times. If these empirical assumptions as to capital’s heterogeneity are false, then his theoretical system of economic activity falls. Hayek never established that changes in interest rates primarily and predominantly influence capital production of goods of higher order and their prices."

"The time component of economic production became vital in Hayek’s work in economic theory. Essentially, his economic work could be said to rest on the idea that the price system is a method for coordinating economic activity through time."

"Hayek never really departed from the essential economic theory that he developed during the 1920s, although he expanded and deepened his analysis."

"Although Hayek ascribed a primarily monetary source to economic fluctuations, he was not a monetarist as this term came to be used."

"Notwithstanding the predominant role in academic economic theory that Keynes and Keynesian economics achieved during the twentieth century, his basic outlook and policy recommendations were shaped by the particular experiences of the British Empire’s waning years."

"Keynes ultimately placed his hopes for good government in exceptional men. The focus in Hayek’s work was rules."

"The General Theory is at once both a book of economic theory and a font of economic prejudices—there are probably few academics in economics and political science who do not have an opinion of it, whether they have read it or not. It has reached the status—which it obtained almost immediately—where the fact of its existence is as important, if not more important, than what it actually says."

"Hayek’s ultimate social goal—his utopia—was the unification of all humankind in one society."